Transforming Four More Yearsby Norman Solomon
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 10, 2004

Right-wing
trumpets are making a horrific racket across a ravaged political landscape.
For now, hope is barely audible. Progressives seem like fledglings without
feathers, weakly tapping from inside thick shells. Four more years sound
like hell.

Words from Bertolt
Brecht resonate:

... A smooth forehead
betokens
A hard heart.
He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Grief, fear, despair,
rage -- only the emotionally deadened would have none of it. Bush’s victory
is a huge defeat for humanity. The consequences will be extremely grim.

Ideological fanatics
have extended their control over the Executive Branch while increasing their
domination of Congress. The “leaders” who lied the country into war are
plunging ahead with escalating carnage in Iraq. Soon they’ll take action to
make the Supreme Court more authoritarian -- threatening abortion rights,
freedom of speech, basic legal protections for defendants and other civil
liberties. A theocratic stench is in the air.

This emergency has not
been averted. It’s here.

While plenty of
uncertainties loom ahead, the imperatives are not in doubt: We won’t give
up. We’re going to fight back.

Progressives will
challenge the Bush regime’s agenda in a wide range of venues. During the
next months and years, the urgent task is to develop political coalitions
that can effectively push back against the dominant right-wing madness.

Of course progressives
will need to keep talking with each other, building counter-institutions,
strengthening independent media outlets -- but that’s far from enough. We’ve
got to greatly improve ongoing communication with the general public. We can
find better ways to clearly advocate (without rhetoric or evasion) for
social justice and peace. And we can generate far more pressure on elected
officials. These are crucial goals in an era when the Bush administration
and its allies are promoting policies with fascistic elements.

I believe that
progressive movements should be independent of the Democratic Party while
recognizing that it is not our main enemy. The main enemy is the right-wing
power of the Republican Party. In this period, anachronistic fury at the
Democratic Party is not going to get us very far.

When the New Left
emerged during the 1960s, liberal Democrats were in control of U.S. foreign
policy. Logically, activists viewed the war-crazed Johnson administration as
their main foe. The New Left largely defined itself in opposition to the
liberal establishment and the Democratic Party.

Forty years later,
let’s “be here now.” In this era, liberals don’t control the policies of the
U.S. government. For that matter, neither do centrist or conservative
Democrats. The government has been commandeered by right-wing Republicans.
Their domestic agenda is filled with repressive measures, and their extreme
militarism shows no sign of abating. The Pentagon’s new murderous assault on
Fallujah is a byproduct of the neocon grip on Washington’s levers of power.

We’ll need to build a
much stronger antiwar movement that insists on swift and complete withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Iraq. While politicians and mainstream pundits offer
their double talk, we have a clear message: This war, based on lies, is
totally unacceptable. We support the troops; we want them to stop killing
and being killed. We want them to come home. The presence of U.S. troops in
Iraq is a major cause of instability and violence -- especially since most
Iraqi people believe the goal of the U.S. invasion was occupation and
control over oil, not liberation.

We need a progressive
movement that insists on blocking right-wing judicial appointees, especially
for the Supreme Court. No compromise.

Movements that
challenge Bush on domestic and foreign policies could change the social and
political terrain of the country. The need for effective coalitions has
never been greater, and the potential is enormous. While resisting Bush’s
next efforts to move the country rightward, we’ll have opportunities to
create new alliances including large numbers of young people, unions, people
of color, and a wide range of other constituencies.

Progressives have the
opportunity to win elections with platforms featuring economic populism.
We’ll need to show how it can be done, not merely preach about the failures
of past Democratic campaigns while touting the inevitability of triumphs for
hypothetical campaigns.

If we believe that a
progressive message can resonate with voters, let’s find ways to prove it.
Proclamations of superior theory won’t be compelling -- particularly during
the next several years, when the right-wing fires are raging and it’s
imperative to douse the flames.

Clearly, the entire
election system in this country needs a drastic overhaul: from equitable
registration to uniform voting-machine technology with paper trails to
independent legal oversight free of partisan control. Meanwhile, enclaves of
“instant runoff voting” need to be expanded to show that IRV can work well.
And the battle for genuine campaign finance reform is yet to be won.

The current news is a
horror show that may seem to preclude realistic hope. But if history is any
guide, we’ll move forward: while struggling with the grief, fear, despair
and rage.

Speaking at the first
World Social Forum, nearly four years ago, Eduardo Galeano told of a
statement he read on the walls of a Latin American city: “Let’s save
pessimism for better times.”